THE EMPTY HERMITAGE. A COMPROMISE ABOUT BOB. HOW MRS. STEPTOE HAD
NOTHING TO CONCEAL. HOW CINTILLA CAUGHT MR. CHALLIS. CALYPSO'S RUG
ISLAND. GOOD-BYE! PROMISE NOT TO COME TO BIARRITZ! THE SKEIN WOUND
The unhappy author hung on persistently at the Hermitage, in the face
of the candid neglect of every duty by the servant who had given
warning, and the uncandid pretences of Mrs. Steptoe that, in the
absence of her mistress, which she treated as a thing _de die in diem_,
the one object of her life, deep-rooted in her heart of hearts, was
the comfort and well-being of her master. Her catering took the form
so common in the British household, of a joint twice a week, twice
re-incarnate as hash and mince, and a nice little bit of rump-steak on
the odd day out. Her potatoes were hygrometric, owing to their being
the wrong sort--there was great latitude for physical defect in that!
Her other vegetables--lettuce, cabbage, what not!--had all lost their
hearts, whatever was not stalk being flamboyant exfoliation. Even her
brockilo sprouts were diffuse, and her cauliflowers wept. The bread was
always second-hand--owing to the price of flour, said the baker's man,
and he knew--and The Cheese was an affliction, a nightmare, which was
supposed to be American or Cheddar, but whose days in the States or in
Somersetshire were long, long ago.
Why did Challis endure it, when he might have thrown off all disguise
and lived at his Club, where there is a capital library to write in,
which nobody ever uses? Simply because of a pleasant dream he flattered
his mind with, of a cab with luggage atop, and a sort of revised
Marianne alighting, and the voices of his children. He was lying low
for the fulfilment of this dream, without ever saying aloud to his
heart that it was a possibility. Or, rather, he was fending against her
return to the damper of an empty house. That would be altogether too
sickening.
It was horribly dreary in the empty house. How he would have rejoiced
to hear but one short torrent of unruly fury, but one complaining
whimper, from the unrevised Marianne of the past! But he was given over
to the Silences and the intermittent sounds that drive them home--the
tradesmen's boys--the postmen's knocks. This could not last for ever,
though! Bob would be back from school--was overdue, in fact--and then
he would keep watch and ward in his father's absence. Challis favoured
an image in his mind of a hospitable Bob, welcoming his revised
step-mother, and risking statements about his father's return in
fabulously short periods. He devised a plan for Bob to ring him up at
the Club from the call-station at East Putney.
* * * * *
He had a bad half-hour when Bob did return, knowing nothing, and found
him the sole tenant of the Hermitage. He thought it best to take his
stand on Mrs. Steptoe's security of indefinite to-morrows, treat the
matter lightly, and assure Bob that his mater and sisters would come
back in the course of a few days. Bob accepted the statement in view
of the fact that he didn't know yet that his phonograph, reluctantly
forsaken when he returned to school, had not suffered from neglect.
Presently Challis heard the diseased voice of the hideous instrument,
dwelling on the fascinations of a yellow girl; and, for once, felt
grateful to its inventor. But it was only a short respite. Bob soon
suspected something seriously wrong, and had to be told. Not the
whole!--that was impossible; what could his father have told him? But
he had to have his painful experience of a first family disruption, and
to understand that the sort of thing that might happen in other chaps'
homes was also possible in his own.
Challis, who was still writing disheartened letters to his wife,
addressing them through the Tulse Hill house-agency, told of Bob's
return, and earnestly begged her to make it possible for the boy to see
his little sisters again. He received an answer, reposted by the agent,
with only the Tulse Hill postmark. It was written by her mother, and
contained a proposal for a sort of truce as far as Bob was concerned.
Subject to a written guarantee that he himself would keep his distance,
Bob might come. Then he wrote earnestly and at length, dwelling on
the cruelty of his wife's misjudgment of his actions, reproaching
her with meanly taking advantage of a legal pretext to deprive him
of his children, and imploring her, for their sake and his, only to
consent to one interview. He was horribly embarrassed in writing this
letter by the unwritten law--so his mind named it as he wrote--which
dictates that every word that is written or spoken on this odious
subject of men and women must be an equivocation or a shuffle. How
could he formulate a phrase that would convey the truth to Marianne;
acknowledge his aberration, and define its extent, without letting
loose the whole gutter-brood of Charlotte Eldridges to point the
finger of denunciation at him; and, worst of all, to squirt at Judith,
skunk-wise, and run away? And if he assumed what so many would be ready
to accept as a sound view, that an attack of amorous intoxication
didn't count, and denied fully and roundly that he had ever been guilty
of any transgression at all--why, then, in the first place it would be
a lie, in the second, the troop of skunks would only resort to another
secretion. "You know, dear, a man always holds himself bound to deny,
for the woman's sake." It was characteristic of Challis that he all but
heard these words from the image his mind made of Charlotte Eldridge
on a sofa, shading its eyes from the light with that confounded pretty
hand of hers. "I see no way out of Charlotte Eldridge," said he in
despair. He ended his letter by an ill-chosen phrase, which put his
head in the lion's mouth. "Is a man never to be forgiven," it said,
"because he is momentarily overtaken by passion for a lady under
exceptional circumstances?" Mrs. Eldridge made her teeth meet over that
expression, be sure of that!
The outcome of the negotiations that followed was that Bob spent
the last half of his long vacation with his mater and sisters and
grandmamma at Broadstairs, which was the place of retirement chosen
by the last-named lady, to be out of her son-in-law's way. It was
recognized by Mrs. Steptoe when Master Bob said where he was a-going.
"Well, now, Master Robert, to think you should go to Broadstairs of all
places in the world! That near Ramsgate it is!"
"No, it isn't!" said Bob. "It's near Margate. I'm right, and you're
wrong." But a compromise was effected over a railway-map in Bradshaw,
very much tore across.
"That is where I saw your dear mamma, Master Robert, afore ever you was
born or thought of. Ramsgate!"
The amenities of controversy were not Bob's strong point. He gave a
prolonged shout of derision. "_You_ never saw _my_ dear mamma! Why, she
died before I was born!" It was a hastily constructed sentence, and
reflected very little credit on Rugby. You may recall Stony Stratford,
and the way some person suffered from insect-bites there?
But Mrs. Steptoe repeated her statement, firmly but respectfully. Not
only had she seen Bob's mamma, but his papa. "Very well, then, I'll
tell the Governor," said Bob, and kept his word before he took his
departure, two days later.
"What's this story my boy has, Mrs. Steptoe, about your seeing his
mother and me at Ramsgate?" It was Sunday morning, and Challis was
pretending to look at a series of volumes known as "The Books," in each
of which a string of misstatements appeared, sanctioned at intervals
by a rubber stamp. Challis made some pretence of adding up a total, to
give Mrs. Steptoe time, and then repeated his question. "Yes--Master
Bob. About Ramsgate. Where were _you_? _I_ can't recollect you." His
mind was seeking some younger Mrs. Steptoe among the children on the
sands, far away from her lodging-house.
"You hardly would, sir!" said she. "I was attending to the house
where you was visiting. I had undertook the cooking at my aunt's
sister's--name of Cantrip...."
"Can't recollect Cantrip."
"No, sir, not likely! But perhaps Hallock?... name of lady and
gentleman stoppin' the season.... Coal-merchant, I believe, in a
considerable way of business." This to keep the whole transaction on
its proper level in Society.
"I remember Hallock," says Challis, reminiscent. "Man lost his hat over
the cliff!... Oh yes--but I remember!--it was his house we dined at...."
"That was the occasion, sir.... The Baker desired me to say, sir, that
he was sorry, but it should not occur again...."
"Never mind the Baker now, Mrs. Steptoe. Tell me about Mr. Hallock. I
can't remember you, but I suppose you were there?"
"Not all along, but in and out of the room. I was divided with the
kitchen. I remember the young lady very well." Mrs. Steptoe felt it
would be safer to leave the young lady's name alone. The ground was
shaky under her feet. In fact, she would rather the matter should never
have come to Challis's knowledge.
His perception was growing of the oddity of Mrs. Steptoe knowing
anything about it. "_I_ can't understand," he said. "That youngster
said you saw _his mother_. How came you to know the young lady was ...
how came you to connect...." He hesitated over the description of Kate.
To say "the lady whom I subsequently married" would have been making
Mrs. Steptoe too much of a family _confidante_.
Now, that good woman had no objection to being of importance, but she
wanted to keep safe, first and foremost. She had nothing to confess to
personally; was, in fact, blameless. Why not simply tell all she knew?
She took that course, telling all that happened about the photograph;
but suggesting that the whole occurrence had been slight, trivial,
colloquial--rather than otherwise hinting at surprise that Mr. Challis
had known nothing about it. Why had she not told him? He made the
inquiry, but interrupted her disclaimer of any _locus standi_ in the
matter, with an admission that he had asked a nonsensical question. Why
_should_ she have done anything but hold her tongue? She was quite an
outsider. Well!--leave her outside. That was the obvious course.
"Thank you, Mrs. Steptoe," said Challis. "I fancy I remember that
photograph.... Oh, the Baker!--yes! Tell him to be very careful that it
doesn't occur again.... No, nothing else. That's all; good-morning!"
But his face, always grave now, was graver than ever as he hunted
through the photograph albums he disinterred from the chiffonier
Charlotte Eldridge had exploited so successfully, and got no success
for himself. He found what he supposed to be the spaces these Ramsgate
portraits had occupied, but nothing in them. They were two or three
sudden blanks in a well-packed book. Marianne had taken them away.
For the first time since the rupture he felt undisguisedly angry with
his wife. It was too bad!--what had he done that she should be so
secretive and mistrustful? Why could she not frankly ask him for an
explanation? After all, it was a subject he would have been so glad she
should be in his confidence about, and one he had only kept back from
her to spare her a needless disquiet. To get absolution for himself he
resumed the whole story of his silence and its reasons. He failed to
see how differently the thing had presented itself to her.
What would Kate have said to him--thought of him--if, when he first
came to her mother's house, he had made a clean breast of the whole
story to any of the family! As long as she kept silence, surely he was
bound to do so? And then, when Kate was in her grave, or in Heaven,
according to the immediate exigency of speech-without-thought among
believers in God-knows-what--all this is Challis's language--when,
anyhow, her demise had qualified her to be spoken of in a hushed voice,
was he to intrude a revelation of a transaction that would have been
at least out of keeping with the ideal Marianne's memory had made of a
beloved and lamented elder sister? Then, as time went on, and no one
seemed a penny the worse that the whole thing should be forgotten, the
lock that shut the secret in got rusty, as such locks do, and Challis
felt far from certain that he could turn the key at all, if he tried.
Besides, for this last five years there had been another cause for
silence. Challis had not been entirely without tidings of the man Keith
Horne in his subsequent career. He had identified him--to his own
satisfaction, at least--with the central figure of a hideous story
told to him by a gaol-chaplain, an observer to whom he was indebted for
much material for copy of a most popular sort. This particular atrocity
was unfit for publication, even in a modern novel, and made Challis
feel grateful to its miserable perpetrator for what would otherwise
have been the crowning act in a series of betrayals. He sometimes even
felt uncertain whether he ought not to feel unreserved thankfulness,
and ascribe credit to him for what may have been the only noble motive
of his life. He had endeavoured to trace the ex-convict, but without
success.
Perhaps the way in which Challis regarded this man's relation with his
first wife and himself may suggest itself from the gaol-chaplain's
having laid great stress on the interest this man excited in his
colleague, the surgeon of the gaol. If the patching up of an absolutely
rotten profligate, that he might complete a term of penal servitude and
return to his sins, was a thing to be desired, then that surgeon had a
right to his triumph. That does not come into the story. But those who
have given any attention to the pathology of disorders incidental to
the ways of destroying body and soul adopted by this wretched creature
will be able to understand why every year that added to Master Bob's
stature, and increased his impudence, without a trace of any visible
taint of constitution, was one more nail in the coffin of a painful
misgiving, which Challis was only too glad should never have been
shared by the mother of Bob's sisters. As Marianne never came to a
knowledge of the ugly story, we may dismiss it finally, having only
cited it because it appears to supply a justification of Challis's
persistent concealment from her of her sister's former marriage.
* * * * *
The story draws a long breath of relief as it returns to Bob, who had
come back from school fuming with an uncharitable jealousy against
a boy named Tillotson, who had two Camberwell Beauties, while Bob
had only one. So the few days he spent at home were chiefly employed
tearing over Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park with a butterfly-net
in a tropical heat. Then he ate his dinner too fast, and rushed away
to his phonograph, at whose maw he gloated over incidents of Love and
Jealousy in the plantations of Louisiana. As his father allowed him to
do exactly what he liked, he was able to give full vent to his devotion
to this pestilent abomination. He even wound it up to stand at his
bed's head and soothe his first sleep with "Bill Bailey."
But when Bob departed for Broadstairs, the desolation was worse than
ever. Challis met it boldly, writing persistently all day, and spending
the evening at his Club. He was rather glad town was so empty; for,
indeed, a week or so after the boy said good-bye to his governor,
hugging him as a French or Italian boy would have done, no two folk who
met seemed ready to accept each other as actual. "You don't mean to say
_you're_ here!" was the commonest greeting. But the incredulity of each
gave way before the other's attestation of his existence.
Challis's disbelief in the presence in Grosvenor Square of any of The
Family was so strong that he had no misgivings whatever on the point
when he knocked at the door with drawn cards in his hand, and set
phrases of inquiry on his tongue. He felt so reassured by the opacity
of the closed windows, parading the emptiness of the mansion, and the
_insouciance_ of the nondescript who looked up from the area at him
before coming to the door, that he never doubted that his visit would
end as he himself at any rate believed he intended it to do. Was he
glad or sorry--did he know himself?--when a light step caught him up at
the street-corner, and a musical voice said, "Oh, please, Mr. Challis!"
It was Cintilla.
Cintilla and Challis had always been on the most familiar terms, so if
he did take her dimpled chin between his thumb and forefinger before
saying, "Oh, please what, Miss Tenterden?" the butcher's boy need
not have pretended to look the other way ostentatiously. Tenterden,
by-the-bye, was the little maid's real name--Clemency Tenterden.
"Please I was to catch you and bring you back for Miss Judith."
"You don't mean that Miss Judith is in town?"
"Oh _no_!--not _really_ in town. Why, you should see the state the
house is in! And Mrs. Protheroe has gone to her brother James's widow
at Bridport." Mrs. Protheroe was the housekeeper.
"We won't dispute about terms, Miss Tenterden. I gather that
Miss Judith is not technically in town. I suppose she's going on
somewhere--that's it, isn't it?"
"Oh yes--and, please, it's such fun, Mr. Challis. She's going to
Biarritz to stay, and take me, and I'm to learn to speak French."
Evidently there was one little maid in this world having a high old
time, and determined to make the most of it.
There was an island on a rug in the back-parlour--the sole outbreak
of visible furniture in a wilderness of brown holland, and rolled-up
carpets, and chandeliers in bags, and pictures whose backs provoked
an interest none had ever felt in their faces. "Like some females,"
thought Challis, as he picked his way to the island through the
_débris_. On the island was its Calypso, the only member of The Family
in town.
Judith was as beautiful as ever, as she extended both hands to him.
"I'm so glad the child caught you, Scroop," said she. Absolute
self-possession!--Estrildis herself could not have been more collected.
"But I'm sorry for things. Now sit down and let us talk reasonably....
Yes--there!" This was to Cintilla, fixing a nicely chosen distance
for Challis, neither too far nor too near. Cintilla would have liked
to supply a chair a little nearer; she had no idea of people being so
artificial.
Challis's self-possession was far from absolute. In fact, he was
tremulous. "You were good to send that letter," he said. But the last
word sounded like "letterm," as he checked his speech short.
"You were going to say 'Miss Arkroyd,'" said she. "At least, do not let
us be prigs. Call me Judith--at least, for now."
Could it matter, either way? "You were good to send that letter,
Judith," he repeated. "But, as I told you, it did no good--has done no
good." For he had written as much, and some more, to Royd. But his pen
had always stopped short of a full account of his desolation.
"I suppose we're all human," said she absently; and the remark seemed
to want application. "What leads you to suppose she will never forgive
you? What she says?" Challis shook his head. "Her manner?... No?--then
what?"
"You don't understand.... Well!--I have never told you, certainly.
Marianne ... I have never succeeded in seeing her. She and her mother
have gone away from London, and in order that my boy may not be
separated from his sisters, I have been obliged to promise not to
follow them." He explained the position more fully.
Judith laughed, and Challis heard nothing sinister in her laugh. But,
then, he was on Calypso's island.
"You are too soft-hearted, Scroop. Really, you must forgive my
laughing! But you are so very--Arcadian!" Challis waited visibly for
an explanation. "Couldn't you see that what this dear good woman will
want, when she gets tired, will be a golden bridge to come back across?
Something to save her face! _She'll_ never admit she was wrong. But for
the sake of the children, don't you see? We are in the region of high
unselfish motive at once."
Marianne would never admit she was wrong! Very likely; but the point
was, was she wrong? Challis caught himself almost taking sides with
Penelope against Calypso. The point was danger-point in these seas.
Never was a stranger clash in a human soul than the one Challis was
conscious of when he half resented the tone in which the woman he had
a passion for spoke of the one for whom he had an affection. We had
nearly written "the one whom he loved." But surely he loved Judith?--or
what is the vocabulary of the Poets worth? The ambiguities of language
have been beforehand with the story, and it cannot stop to _préciser_
them.
"Marianne will not persist a moment after she is convinced she is
wrong." He spoke a little stiffly--almost a mild censure of Calypso.
But as a set-off he took for granted that Penelope _was_ wrong, past
contention.
"Perhaps I should have said she will never _believe_ she was wrong.
Better than 'admit.'" This was spoken with placid indifference. One
might have thought the speaker absorbed in the flashing of brilliants
on the beautiful hand she was holding to catch a sunset-ray from the
back-window; the palm, as she shifted it about, showing each finger
outlined with transmitted rosy light. Challis tried to reason away its
witchery--to quash its jurisdiction. But it was a fatal hand. "Go on
telling me," said its owner. "Tell me more about Marianne. What do you
suppose she thinks?"
"I have no right to suppose she thinks any more than she said in her
letter. I told you in my letter all I think I had any right to repeat."
"And I have no right to be inquisitive. But the letter spoke plainly. I
am convinced of it."
"The letter was indignant with me for showing _her_ letter to you
before, as she supposed, I had read it myself."
"Before, as she supposed." This was mere repetition of the phrase, as
a writer from dictation might have spoken. She turned her eyes full on
him. "You _hadn't_ read it, Scroop," she said.
"I had to the best of my belief, at the time I showed it to you." He is
a little nettled, and she sees it. He embarks on self-justification--a
thing one should never do. "There was not a single word in what
I supposed the letter contained that you might not have read. My
statement that I had not read the words on the back was entitled to
some consideration. _I_ never put anything of importance away in a
postscript, where it may be overlooked." He stopped abruptly, feeling
irrelevant.
"Because you are an eminent author! We mustn't forget that." Judith's
laugh lightened the conversation. "No, no, Scroop! you haven't got a
leg to stand on, and you had better admit it. You oughtn't to have
shown me the letter."
"Very well--admitted! But admit, too, that I have made amends as far
as I could. It seems to me that a mountain has been made out of a
molehill...."
Challis stopped suddenly, very ill at his ease. Judith, with a look
half amused, half expectant, waited. She evidently was not going to
help. Indeed, she would not have found it easy. Each knew that the
conversation was being sustained artificially by attaching undue weight
to the fact that Marianne's sole ground of complaint was this showing
of her letter. Each knew how much more there was behind; how strong
Marianne's indictment might have been with a full knowledge of the
facts. After all, this blaming her for unjust action, on imperfect
data, which would have been just had the whole come to light, was the
merest quibble, and both knew it.
Judith broke the silence first, but only with what amounted to a
declaration that she would not help. "There must be a beautiful sunset
somewhere," was all it came to. And then matters were relieved by
the silvery voice of Cintilla. Might she take away the tea-things?
Yes--she might. While she did so, the talk turned on the legal question
of Marianne's right to capture the children. Challis had, he said,
consulted more than one legal friend on the subject, and they were all
in a tale. The children were illegitimate, and _therefore_ belonged to
their mother. He got some satisfaction, evidently, from shredding a
conspicuous absurdity of human law--why should children be claimable at
all by a father who was a mere predecessor _et præterea nihil_--just
a parent? He himself had made his title good to these two kids by his
share in fostering them. Had his claim been a legal one only, he would
have foregone it to make way for that of their natural owner. But he
touched the matter very lightly. It did not outlast the removal of the
tea-things.
Then Judith, going to the window, stood looking out, watching the light
die from a cloud whose under side had broken into ridges of rosy flame.
Its last ridge no longer saw the sun, when she turned slowly, coming
back to a seat nearer Challis than the one she had occupied.
"This will be good-bye," she said. "I am going to Biarritz, and shall
be away till January certainly. I did not want to go without seeing you
again. So I was glad when the child came running up to say it was you,
and shouldn't she catch you?" Her speech was redolent of self-command;
no concessions to the pathos of parting.
"May I write to you?"
"I was going to ask you to do so. I shall hope to hear that your home
is happy again, and that all goes well. This sort of thing has happened
before--oh dear, how often!"
As Challis sat during the short silence that followed, not looking at
all at his companion, one might almost have fancied that he shrank away
from her, as one afraid. He found a voice to answer her, but not easily.
"I will write," he said. "And, believe me, Judith, in what I am going
to say now I am speaking truth. I look with hope to the softening of my
poor wife's heart, to the sound of her return to my empty home, and the
voices of my babies...."
"Why should you suppose I doubt you? Of course you do!"
"Yes, but, dearest!--I must call you so, or call you something with
some heart in it; pardon me!--can I tell the reason? Can the reason be
told?... Oh yes, of course, I know what you are going to say--it is
reason enough that she is my wife, that the kids are _my_ kids, that
the home is my home. So it is; but there is more reason than that, and
I am at a loss to tell it.... What?"
But Judith left whatever it was unsaid, and exchanged it for "No--go
on!"
"Perhaps I do wrong when I use the only words I can find when I say
that I long for Marianne back again to help me against _you_? Ought I
not to say to help me against myself? Where is the fault in you that
you are what you are? _You_ are blameless, at least. It is _I_ that
must needs love you!"
And perhaps the story does wrong to allow a suspicion that, in the
heart that beautiful face belonged to, was a half-formed thought
that the speaker was even more Arcadian than the owner of both had
suspected. But it creeps in--this suspicion--with the telling of a
smile kept under by lips on the watch to check it. One thing may be
relied on: Miss Arkroyd was not the least agitated.
Challis saw nothing of her face, as he never raised his eyes, and his
face was half averted. He continued: "I cannot help an experience
that no one will believe. I have no appeal against it. But I tell you
this--that when I came home after ... after that evening at Royd, when
I forgot myself and told the truth, for a few hours I forgot _you_ too.
As I sit here now, it seems to me a thing absolutely incredible. Even
when Marianne turned against me on grounds that seemed to me almost a
pretext, no memory of you or my folly--call it so if you will--anything
you like!--no memory came back to me. Indeed, it is almost as though I
had been two men by turns." He raised his eyes to hers, with a slowly
drawn breath, as of fatigue, from the turmoil of his own feelings. If
there was any of the smile left then, she was in time to cancel it.
But she hardly said anything. A mere run of the vowels of a sentence,
as one speaks through a yawn, is not speech. It just made him say
"What?" but evidently had no share in the question she replied to him
with, and stopped in the middle of, "And what was it then made you?..."
But the words she had decided on ignoring were "How funny men are!" Let
us hope there was some affectation of indifference in this.
Challis understood her question. "What made my disorder break out
again?" he repeated. "I can't fix the time. But now that I have been
forced to discard one of my selves--the one that hoped for the calm of
his old home life again ... no, Judith, indeed there have been many
happy times...."
"Why? Did you think I doubted it?"
"I wasn't sure.... But I had not finished. Now that my hope has been
simply strangled, I have to be my other self, in self-defence. I tell
you--I must tell you--that the thought of you is with me every hour of
the day, and what have I to help me to fight against it? Even my boy
is away, and what adds to the cruelty of the position is that, will I
nill I, I have to feel glad of his absence. Because when he was with me
I was in constant terror of being asked for explanations which I could
not give. A girl of his age would have been far easier to tell it to."
"Do you think so? I feel as if I could tell him about it all--much,
much easier!" During some chat over the fact, and its strangeness,
that the tongue of either sex is freest in speech with its opposite,
on this one particular subject of Love, Challis felt, as they sat on
in the growing twilight, that the soul-brush was at work again with
a vengeance. The utter satisfaction of his thirst for speech about
himself and his plight was so much sheer nectar to him while it lasted.
If he paid for it after, at least his draught should be a deep one now.
He confessed to the extent to which his constant home-life in the past
had stood in the way of the formation of intimate friendships, and that
he really had no one he could confide in. "I have a second cousin,"
said he--he was always absurd, sooner or later--"who has an impediment
and a wig, and is slightly deaf. No, I really could _not_ take him into
my confidence." Judith said: "Of course you couldn't; I see that."
"Besides," he continued, "he wears spats, and goes through courses of
treatment for dyspepsia at Cheltenham." And Judith said again: "I see."
"The only man I have spoken to about it," continued Challis, "is
Athelstan Taylor. Well, I suppose he's about the only man I know that
I _could_ speak to. You know he came to see me straight away. You told
him?"
"Yes, I told him. I showed him my letter--the one I wrote to your wife.
He said I could not possibly write a better one. And she tore it up and
sent it back?"
"She did. You know he went to try and see her, and only succeeded
in getting at the old hag, her mother. I had built on his being a
parson--thought it might be some use for once. But I suppose he was the
wrong sort somehow--out of the wrong _cuvée_."
"Did he give offence over the--the Deceased Wife's Sister question?"
"Why, yes! The hag said he ought to be unfrocked for saying he didn't
care a straw about the legal question, and only wanted to clear up what
seemed a painful misunderstanding. The cloth fell through, and the old
body drove him out with religious hoots."
"There's a thing you won't mind my asking?..."
"Go on!"
"People are saying--political people--that the Bill will pass the
Lords next summer, and that then all past marriages of the sort will
be legalized, because it will be _retrospective_--I believe that's the
proper word. Suppose it passes, what shall you do then?"
"Get the kids back, of course! And then Polly Anne will come to her
senses. But she will--she will, you know--before that."
"Suppose she laid claim to having annulled her marriage, while she
still had a legal right to do so?"
"It wouldn't be allowed. She's a woman. Women's claims are not allowed
in law-courts. It's heads Law wins, tails they lose.... Yes!--I should
stoop to take advantage of it in this case."
"Perhaps you would be right, this once. We must hope it will pass."
"I do hope it--with most of my heart. Do you believe me? Can you
believe me, in the face of what I have said to you?" For Challis knew
quite well that this profession of a hope was only what he knew he
would be able to say when the soul-brush stopped, and that he said it
now mechanically. Wait till he was off Calypso's island!
Judith left his question unanswered; put it aside, rather. "I
suppose you know it's all settled about Frank and Sibyl?" she said.
Oh yes--Challis knew. When would it be? As soon after Christmas as
possible, Judith supposed. An interruption--Cintilla with a letter--was
not unwelcome. But she needn't light up; when Mr. Challis was gone
would do. "That was a broad hint, Scroop," said Calypso, lying back in
her chair with the unopened letter in that destructive hand fallen idly
on her lap.
But in a few moments, when he took the hint and made a move towards
departure, she rose. And if the truth must be told, she went quite as
near a good stretch and a shake as such high breeding as hers could
allow itself. It did not matter; her grace and beauty, perhaps her
dressmaker, negatived the action. That bodice was perfect in cut. "You
know, Scroop, that this _is_ good-bye?" she said. And then in reply to
his assent: "We won't be mawkish over it, please! I want you to make
me a promise, and keep it.... Well, yes!--I'll tell you what it is. It
would hardly be fair to make you promise in the dark. Promise not to
come to Biarritz!" Challis hesitated, but promised. Judith laughed. "I
was right, you see," she said. "You would have asked about trains at
Cook's to-morrow."
There they stood, in the half-dark! Was Calypso saying to herself:
"Now, can I trust this man to break his promise?" Was Challis asking
himself, did she mean him to keep it?
In the end she spoke first, with a sudden movement that implied an
end to disguise. "Oh, dear, how silly one is! Why should we not speak
plain? After all, we are alive, and grown up." Yet it seemed difficult,
too, and came with an effort. "Listen to me, Scroop, and don't try to
say things--because it does no good. You and I have to say good-bye,
and mean it. We are best apart, for both our sakes. You as good as said
but now that you would forget me if Marianne would help. That is what
it came to; don't deny it!" Challis felt that his attempt to lay his
soul bare had failed; that he was being misinterpreted. But he had a
poor case; silence was safest. She continued: "It is not as if I were
prepared to quarrel with my family for your sake. I certainly would
not for anyone else's, if that is any satisfaction to you. But suppose
I were, have you asked yourself what course would be open to us?...
Oh yes!--I am talking like a lawyer; but a woman has to be practical
when her life is at stake.... Well!--what could you do? Ignore your
marriage, under the false warranty of a law we both disallow, and make
a sort of Gretna Green business of it next spring?..."
"Why next spring? I don't see how the time comes in."
"Foolish man! You haven't thought the matter out. Just think of it
_now_. Suppose that Bill were to pass next session--or next whatever it
is--while we are arranging this escapade? ... what would you do then,
please?"
"I can't look at it in that--concrete way."
"Because it puts you in a fix." She had a half-hearted laugh for man's
superior wisdom, with his eyes closed to all practical issues. Then
her voice got a sudden tone. "Come, we must part, you and I! There is
nothing else for it. It is all nonsense about your wife. She will come
to her senses. She will have to, if the Bill passes."
"I should not try to compel her against her will."
"Are you sure? Might it not be your duty to the children?... Now, don't
let's talk about it any more. It must come to good-bye in the end...."
Her words hung fire, but she kept her self-control admirably; no one
could have called her excited, much less hysterical. Then she said, in
a quick, subdued voice: "I shall always think of our good time--before
all this--as one of the happiest times of my life. Now good-bye!"
Why could the man not shake hands and go, without more ado? Of course,
that would have been the correct form--left his cards--sent his
compliments to The Family--_bon voyage!_--all that sort of thing!
Well!--perhaps the woman did not mean him to.
What happened was this--that is, this is all the story needs: that
Judith repeated decisively, "Good-bye!" and Challis said never a word.
But he had her hands in his, and it was some slight emphasis in his
clasp, or some little turn a bystander would not have seen, from which
she shrank back, saying: "No--or listen! Promise me again you will not
come to Biarritz." To which he replied: "I promise." Then she said:
"Very well, then--on those terms say good-bye how you like."
Then it was that Challis made matters ten times worse, ten times
harder to deal with in that period of his life that followed. It is
a curious thing that one good long kiss--a transaction that when in
a frolic has absolutely no meaning whatever--should acquire from its
concomitants a force to cling about the memory, and in a sense to warp
the understanding, of its executant--the only word we can find at a
short notice. It did, in this case, and possibly Calypso meant it
should do so all along--administered her little dose of nectar with a
full knowledge of its powers as an intoxicant. Indeed, if Miss Arkroyd
had it in her heart through all this last interview to complete the
winding of that skein she began a twelvemonth back, she could scarcely
have handled the thread more cleverly.
It is not for this story to decide what the young lady had in her
heart. For all it knows, she may have felt either triumphant,
disgusted, or indifferent, when she saw the name of Mr. Alfred Challis
the author--"Titus Scroop" in a parenthesis--in the list of recent
arrivals at Biarritz, and did not mention the fact to her hostess or
any of her friends. But she met Mr. Challis on the esplanade next day,
and introduced him to them equably as a friend of her father's. She
must have forgiven him his broken promise, or ignored it.